Eurasia Center Events

In light of reports of Russian interference in the US elections, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) called for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to address the cyber threats facing the United States. The hearing, which took place on January 5, included testimony from Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel J. Lettre II, and Commander of the United States Cyber Command Admiral Michael S. Rogers, who also currently serves as a Director of National Security Agency and a Chief of Central Security Services.

“What we need most of all is the end of hostilities,” said Martin Sajdik, Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in Ukraine and the Trilateral Contact Group on the implementation of the peace plan in eastern Ukraine, at an event about Ukraine. “Without international assistance from the EU, from the United States, from Japan...I don’t think that one can see a fast recovery—and a fast recovery is definitely necessary to have the people believe in the future.”

“The priority is the people,” agreed Oleksandr Petryk, alternate executive director of the International Monetary Fund.

Sajdik and Petryk joined other experts at the Atlantic Council for a December 14 conference examining the future of Ukraine’s economy; the event included two panels and a keynote speech.

Moderated by Irina Paliashvili, senior counsel at the RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group, the first panel focused on the Donbas and included Sajdik; Petryk; Vitaly Butenko, commercial...
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It has been more than two years since the European Union and the United States imposed economic sanctions on Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. How effective have the sanctions been?

According to US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in 2016, sanctions were meant to “press Moscow to bring an end to the violence in Ukraine and fully implement its commitments under the Minsk [ceasefire] agreements.”

By that standard, they have failed. The situation in eastern Ukraine today is one of low-intensity warfare rather than a ceasefire. The far-reaching sectoral sanctions that were imposed after the Kremlin’s actions in eastern Ukraine, which targeted key Russian industries, businesses, and banks, failed to get Moscow to hold up its side of the Minsk II ceasefire agreement.

Still, there are intermediate goals, not simply full compliance, to consider: to contain Russia’s adventurism and to craft a cautionary tale in which Russia pays a high price...
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Former Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili’s opening remarks at the Kyiv Post’s Tiger Conference on November 29 were puzzling. “Thanks for a couple of cameras,” he said.

He was referring to the fact that even though he is a national figure with a resonant message in Ukraine, he’s the victim of a news blackout by the country’s oligarch-controlled TV media.

Such concentration of media ownership is one of the cornerstones of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption.

By contrast, the press has been focused for years on Saakashvili’s success in turning around Georgia through rapid reforms. In 2015, he was recruited by President Petro Poroshenko to bring about reforms as Governor of Odesa Oblast. But he quit this year after obstructionism made him realize it was too entrenched to change internally.

“I want to replace the entire political class. Elections happen and nothing changes, it gets worse. These guys have been around since the 1990s and they...
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